The present invention relates generally to encapsulation and decapsulation of data communications packets. More particularly, the present invention relates to pipelining such encapsulation and decapsulation to achieve faster data throughput.
Network devices operating in a wireless local-area network (WLAN) may employ the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) specified by the IEEE 802.11i standard (April 2004) to protect the confidentiality and integrity of transmitted data from malicious attacks.
According to TKIP, the sender encapsulates packets of data to be sent using a temporal key negotiated with the receiver. The receiver, upon receiving the packets, decapsulates the packets using the temporal key. This scheme works well as long as the transmitted packets are separated by inter-packet gaps that are large enough to allow the receiver to complete the decapsulation of one packet before the next packet arrives.
However, in WLAN applications that require very high throughput, data packets are transmitted in succession with no inter-packet gaps. In addition, in IEEE 802.11n Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems, data packets are transmitted at even higher data rates, leaving even less time for decapsulation.